Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-03-30
THE GoLDENsoN CASE.

With phenomenal CELEBRITY Alexander
Goldenson, who murdered Mamie Kelly
in November last, in San Francisco, was
brought to trial, and on Monday evening
was found guilty and the death penalty af-
fixed. 1t is so unusual thing for muir
der to be brought to trial and judgment
within the lifetime of all the witnesses,
and while the facts are still fresh in the
public mind, that public surprise is nat
ural. In no case now recalled was such
persistent effort ever made to postpone
trial. The attorneys for the defense in
vain pleaded pre-engagements; the Court
properly ruled that the demands of public
Justice were superior to those of private
convenience, and the defendant and his
friends refusing to engage other counsel,
the Court appointed attorneys for Golden
son, and he was forced to trial. 1t was
new experience in criminal practice in
California, and old-time criminal lawyers
looked upon it as a rude one, interfering
with the long-established custom to delay
trials and retard the proceedings until the
public became Indifferent concerning them.
OF course Goldenson's defense was in
sanity. 1t is the usual plea of brutal muir
derers who are unable to set up even a
shadow of provocation as excusing their
crimes. Goldenson went into hequestion of
heredity however, and attempted to prove
that one of his grandparents was insane.
He succeeded only in showing that the
man was cranky, irascable and cross
grained, tempestuous old Russian. The de-
PENDANT proved that he himself had been
violent at times, beating his brothers, in
sulting his parents and abusing his asso-
ciates. But, Invested of all the cunning
seeming of mental unbalance, the
trial simply developed the fact
that this british boy is hoodlum-not
insane, but morally depraved; not bereft
of reason, but exceedingly cunning in his
brutalities. The animal is predominant
in this wretched being; he is devoid of
the ordinary sense of shame that most
men feel. Filled with liquor-according
to his own confession-ugly-tempered,
brutal and utterly depraved, he conceived
the idea of "killing his girl" as he him
self pharsed it, and on the public street
shot to death the child Mamie Kelly, as
she left her school-room for her home No
human being has in recent years been
brought to public notice who more richly
deserved the halter's sudden pull Hang
ing is too good for such brute. If hui
mainly and law did not forbid unusual
punishment, good might be conserved by
breaking the brutal disposition of this
wretchedly deprayed fellow by enforced
physical suffering. Even if faint sus-
picion anywhere exists that Goldenson is
touched with insanity, a good use to which
to put him and his kind is hanging. The
asylums are not for such as Goldenson. If
insane to the degree that leads him to kill
girls, he cannot be set at liberty. The
jury has, therefore, with eminent fitness
assigned him to adorn the gallows-tree, to
which he is legitimate heir. His execu-
ton may serve to warn the small army of
young hoodlums, who go about full of beer
with pistols at their hips, that there are
safer avocations than the shooting of their
girls